Resolving To Do Better

Gray, cold, and thirty degrees out there, with light snow falling outside my office window.

A perfect day in this early Advent season. December is supposed to look and feel like this.

Thinking a lot in recent days about change and the inertia of advancing age. So many ways of living I've accumulated in six decades, many of them not-so-healthy and completely fixable with a resolve to move in a different direction. That, in turn, requires a change in one's way of thinking, in many ways a far more difficult thing.

How does one go about that, exactly? Religious conversions seem to provide a path for some, but I seem hard-wired not to venture into that irrational space one must occupy for an authentic religious experience. Or at least that's what William James seemed to think, and it tracks with my interactions with the ecstatically spiritual when I was in the business.

So no, there won't be any of that. And since we've moved out of the haunted house, I also don't anticipate a Dickensian personal transformation through the intervention of three ghosts.

[Snowing a little harder now, and lots of blue on the radar, something we never see on the Gulf Coast].

Maybe establish a personal set of rules, then follow them.

I was fascinated by a profile someone posted recently on social media of William Pryor Letchworth, a late 19th century Buffalo businessman whose home on the Genesee River sits in the middle of what is now Letchworth State Park. He built the place as a refuge from the worry and stress of his very successful saddlery and iron works.

Apparently on one wall of the home he posted his personal rules for living. No moral philosopher could've done any better:

“Rise at 6 o’clock. Breakfast at 6:30am. Dinner or lunch at 12:30pm. Supper at 6:30pm. Retire at 9:30pm. Attend divine service once every Sunday.

-Tell the truth under all circumstances, when necessary to speak.

-Never wound the feelings of others if it can be avoided.

-Strive to be always cheerful.

-Review the actions of the day every night, and apply to them the test of my conscience.

-In business affairs keep in mind that “procrastination is the thief of time”, and that “time is money”.

-Be temperate in all things.

-Strive to speak kindly, without giving offense, always with coolness and deliberation, having due regard for the views of others.

-Aim at a higher standard of character.

-Attempt great things and expect great things.

-Aim to do all possible good in the world, and so live as to live hereafter and have a name without reproach.

One can see traces of Jesuit discernment in there, although Letchworth was raised a Quaker. And how very western New York this all sounds--Peg and I frequently remark on how "boring" the locals can be, mostly because they're temperate and hard-working, and nice to a fault. If you held Letchworth's checklist up to the average resident of this stretch from Corning to Rochester and across to Buffalo, I suspect most would demonstrate each of the above attributes.

Maybe coming here was a path to breaking the inertia of life to this point. Maybe it's not too late to change.